#Hanzo 'The Razor' Itami

[brody75]

Hanzo the Razor: Who's Got the Gold? (1974)

[heroesfromtheeast]

Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice

[chernobog13]

Shintaro Katsu as Edo-period constable Itami Hanzo, aka Hanzo the Razor.

Katsu-san’s most famous role is Zatoichi the blind swordsman, whom he portrayed in 26 films and 100 television episodes.

Hanzo the Razor, on the other hand, is probably Katsu-san’s most Infamous role.  Hanzo is everything Zatoichi is not: sociopathic, rude, cruel, misogynistic, and determined to do whatever he has to in order to solve a case, no matter who or what he has to destroy in the process.

Hanzo was the star of a trilogy of films - Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice, Hanzo the Razor: The Snare, and Hanzo the Razor: Who’s Got the Gold? - that were released between December 1972 and February 1974.  Katsu-san produced the films through his own production company, Kastu Productions.

The trilogy was based on the mature themed manga (known as gekiga) Goyokibe by Koike Kazuo.  Katsu-san would also adapt Kazuo-san’s most famous work, Lone Wolf and Cub, as a series of six films starring his older brother, Tomisaburo Wakayama.

The Hanzo films are exploitation films, making as much use of abundant blood and nudity as they can get away with.  But their most notorious element is Hanzo’s special way of “interrogating” female criminals and suspects.  He is (how to put this delicately?) rather well endowed.  In fact, it wouldn’t be stretching things to nickname him “Tripod.”

Each film highlights Hanzo’s special training techniques to make his "special tool” more effective.  There is also at least one scene of Hanzo in action “interrogating” some female who has fallen into his clutches.  To make matters even worse, all of his female victims fall in love with him after their humiliating ordeal.

Katsu-san has played evil characters before and since (Blind Beast immediately comes to mind), but Hanzo is easily his most vile role.  That’s because he believes he’s a good guy.  Hanzo may be a rouge cop in the Edo constabulary, but he believes he’s the best because everyone else on the force - including his supervisor - is corrupt, inept, or both.  Hanzo is essentially the samurai version of Dirty Harry.  In fact, the opening theme music is all very 1970s electric guitar; if you close your eyes and listen you wouldn’t think you were watching a film set during the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Fortunately, the films are so over-the-top that they come across of parodies.  It isn’t possible to take the films seriously, which I believe was the filmmakers’ intention.

However, that’s not an excuse for Hanzo’s actions.  Despite that he thinks he’s a paragon of justice, and that the ends justify the means, at the end of the day he’s still a rapist with a very large masochistic streak in him.  

The trilogy fall into the “have to be seen to be believed” category.  However, I want anyone interested in seeing them to understand what they’re getting into.

On a slightly different note: I had read somewhere that Kazuo-san killed off Hanzo in the gekiga; he was murdered while urinating in an alley.  I do not know if this is true, as I have not been able to find much information on the original story.  That is a heck of a statement the author is making about his creation, though, if it is true.

[littleeyesofpallas]

A random detail I sort of neglected to mention in any of my various previous rants about Urahara's shtick, as it kinds felt like a bit of a tangent... But while most of his attacks have pretty overt BDSM terms, Kamisori[剃刀]:"razor" is a bit of a weird one. For one, it's one of the moves that had to be named in databooks and wasn't named in the manga itself. But on that basis it might strike some people as a tad vague.

Now on the one hand, there's knifeplay and the mix of razor, and "crying out" in his release call, plus the blood theme that all do still work in the most overt ways to let it fit it in, and the fact that it's a little bit of the odd one out even seems to fit it being an after the fact decision, rather than an active part of the theme. And I might be tempted to accept that and leave it at that. But i think there's a more direct link than simple bloodletting to more specific BDSM theme. It'll almost sound more obtuse, but I think it's a reference to the classic 1960s-70s samurai period drama(it's contemporaries with series like Lady SnowBlood, Samurai Executioner, Lone Wolf and Cub, Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman, etc.... (actually i only just realized I think most of those were all also by Kazuo Koike)) and sexploitation series, Kamisori Hanzo[かみそり 半蔵] aka Hanzo The Razor.

In the manga and films adapted therefrom, the protagonist, Itami Hanzo, is a sengoku era police officer of the imperial capital(not a samurai, mind you) with a unique reputation as an unmatched investigator and interrogator. Which, given the genre and period setting, basically means he juggles doing actual detective work tracking down suspects and torturing people for information.

In fact the japanese art of rope sex play (generally referred to as just "shibari" outside of Japan) traces its origins to this same time period as a means of torture that only later became adapted into unique subset of erotica. And Hanzo does make a point in most of his stories, and especially the films, of... uh... let's call it "sexually interrogating" some of his prisoners... with his infamously giant penis.... (Look... I said it's very firmly in the sexploitation genre of the 60s-70s...)

So while the day to day affairs of the maggot's nest are actually left pretty vague all things considered, there are a lot of genre and contextual details that already lend to it being extremely shady. More than just the moral gray of going all Minority Report precog, national security, extrajudicial ghosting people off the streets of the rukongai... the nature of samurai era policing and jailing is one that has always had strong associations with corruption and violence.

So, my point in bringing this up is that the "razor" in his zanpakutou's repertoire isn't just referencing a literal razor and/or razor and blood letting as sex play, but very possibly the namesake "Razor" character also deeply associated with both BDSM and being a jailer of fairly dubious ethics, yet ostensibly still on the side of "good". Because while the move itself actually comes up a little earlier in the story than the rest of the overt BDSM themes, the fact that it was only named when compiling them all after the fact feels like it would warrant an attempt to tie it in more closely, even retroactively.

And positioning Urahara as associated with a character known for holding captive and torturing women lends pretty directly to my interpretations of his relationship with Benihime.

(I had to stop this draft at some point and just let it sit here for a few weeks. and now i have no idea where i was going with it... i don't have the energy to retread the same material so here's it is as i left it, an incomplete thought)

[brody75]

Hanzo the Razor: The Snare (1973)